Andrew Talcott
|birth_place =Glastonbury, Connecticut |death_date = |death_place =Richmond, Virginia |occupation =Civil Engineer }} Andrew Talcott (1797–1883) was an American civil engineer and close friend of Civil War General Robert E. Lee. While serving as a Confederate States of America Colonel and the State Engineer of Virginia, he was arrested and made prisoner of war during that conflict. Early life Talcott was born on April 20, 1797 in Glastonbury, Connecticut.Wilson, James Grand and John Fiske, ed. (1889) "Andrew Talcott" Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography vol. vi, D. Appleton and Company, New York. p.24. He attended West Point, 1818, graduating second in class. In the Engineers, he was garrisoned at Fort Atkinson and explored the passage to Fort Snelling in 1820.Watkins, Albert (1919). "Three Military Heroes of Nebraska". [http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/ne/state/publications/pioneer/nhrv2n4.txt Nebraska History and Record of Pioneer Days V.2 nr.4]. Nebraska State Historical Society His brother was General George Talcott, Chief of the Ordnance Corps,.Stiles, Henry R (1904) The History of Ancient Wethersfield Connecticut, v 2. p 696 His granddaughter Lucia Beverly Talcott (born 1865) married the famous statistician and inventor Herman Hollerith in 1890. He is a descendant Joseph Talcott, Colony of Connecticut Governor from 1724-1741, and John Talcott, one of the founders of Hartford, Connecticut. Career Talcott's career was as a military and civil engineer building forts, roads and railroads both in the States and Mexico. He started the 1824 construction of Fort Adams, at Rhode Island."The History of Fort Adams" In 1833 he extended a previously invented method of finding latitudinal direction. He rediscovered the method to determine a place's latitude from the stars, a method originally invented by the Danish astronomer Peder Horrebow. On further developing Horrebow's method, it subsequently came to be known as the Horrebow-Talcott Method.Captain Albert E. Theberge, Albert. (2001) [http://www.lib.noaa.gov/edocs/BACHE2.htm The Coast Survey 1807-1867] National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Library. The so-called Horrebow-Talcott method fixed latitude "by observing differences of zenith distances of stars culminating within a short time of each other, and at nearly the same altitude, on opposite sides of the zenith." He was hired as superintending engineer for construction on the Hampton Roads at Fort Calhoun and Fort Monroe becoming a superior and friend to the future general, Robert E. Lee and married Harriet Randolph Hackley at Norfolk, Virginia, in 1832. (His wife was also to become a close platonic companion to General Lee.) Talcott surveyed the Ohio-Michigan border with Lee in the spring of 1835.Price, Andrew "Robert E. Lee: The Engineer" With the rank of Captain, he resigned his commission in 1836 and by 1839 he was a civil engineer and surveyor of the Mississippi river delta together with a young A. B. (Andrew) Gray.Reconnaissance of the Passes of the Delta of the Mississippi, Louisiana U.S. Coast Survey map (1852) Talcott was considered for the post of Superintendent of the Coast Survey which was subsequently filled by Alexander Bache in 1843, but he went on to supervise construction of the Richmond and Danville Railroad in 1849, where he was later appointed general manager. Talcott became chief engineer and superintendent of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad and later appeared as a consultant at the Coroner's jury for the disaster at Desjardins Canal Bridge, Hamilton, Ontario, 1857."The Desjardins Bridge Catastrophe". (1857) Scientific American. May 2. pp. 265-272 Mexican Railroad He was engaged as an engineer late in 1857 by A. Escandon who, with English financing, planned to connect Veracruz with Mexico City by rail via Cordova and Orizaba, supervising W. W. Finney of the Pony Express. When Escandon purchased the fourth concession from Mosso brothers in 1856, two routes were considered and Talcott was assigned the far more difficult southern passage probably due financial stakes held near Orizaba by the project's investors. The Northern passage was explored by Pascual Almazán). It was supposed to be the steepest railway undertaken up to that time, rising in a distance of and to span the Metlac River was an English-made iron bridge high.García Dávila, Carlos. "The Mexican Railways""A Great Railway Enterprise" (1866) Scientific American. July 7)Burgess, Jack. (1934) "Pony Express Was Idea of Virginian". Richmond Times-Dispatch, December 2 Civil War At the request of Lee, Talcott accepted the positions of Colonel and State Engineer of Virginia in 1861. Talcott was charged with the coastal defense of Richmond and James river.Official correspondence. The war of the rebellion: a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies. (1880) p.781-783, p791, p851, p864 After rearming the star-shaped Fort Boykin, the fort was later crippled by the ironclad corvette USS Galena's escort.Guttman, Jon. "Rebel's Stand at Drewry's Bluff". America's Civil War Magazine Talcott was arrested in New York, March 1863, only to be held at Fort Warren in Massachusetts as a Mexican citizen.The war of the rebellion: a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies. (1899) p135 He returned to a French-reorganized Mexican project in the late 1860s under a new concession where he remained until Juárez defeated Maximilian's conservative regime in 1867. Personal life As a co-claimant he filed an unsuccessful suit before the Supreme Court in 1853, regarding Florida land deeded to his father-in-law R. S. Hackley by the Duke of Alagon in 1819. In his later years, along with his son, Thomas Mann Randolph Talcott, Talcott invested in development in Bon Air, VA. Death Talcott died on Sunday 22 April 1883 at his residence, 519 East Leigh Street in Richmond, Virginia, aged 87, remembered for building the Richmond and Danville Railroad.Daily Dispatch (Richmond, Va.). Biography (p. 1, c. 3). Obituary. "Died at his residence, 519 East Leigh Street, on Sunday the 22d instant, Colonel Andrew Talcott, in the eighty - seventh year of his age. (He built the Richmond & Danville Railroad)". (p. 2, c. 4 ). Publication Tuesday, April 24, 1883. References Category:1797 births Category:1883 deaths Category:American engineers Category:American Civil War prisoners of war